Juice Pack Air. Super Slim iPhone Battery

When the first candy-colored iMac came out, the "i" supposedly meant "internet", as in "easy to connect to the". Within a time span so short that it made the Big Bang look as slow as LA traffic, every other electronic device had added the letter i to the beginning of its name.

Now, we have "Air" which means "impossibly thin and light". The Mophie Juice Pack Air is an impossibly thin and light battery pack for the iPhone 3G, a slimline plastic case which manages to wrap a 1200mAh battery around the iPhone's svelte curves.

The pack claims to power the the phone for an additional 270 hours of standby time, and extra 4.5 hours of 3G chatting and a whopping nine hours of regular old fashioned 2G talktime.

The advantage of these packs is that they can stay on the phone at all times, even as you charge and sync. The Juice Pack Air also has a standby mode of its own, letting you run the iPhone normally and then switching in the extra power at the last minute. According to Mophie, this actually uses less juice than leaving the iPhone on a constant charge.

If I could be bothered, I'd buy one of these for Boing Boing Gadget's blond bombshell boss, Joel Johnson. At the CES show in Vegas this year he was constantly talking into his iPhone and regularly swapping out backup battery dongles. This would be neater -- if he needed it. I discovered later that Joel has some insecurity issues and was simply pretending to talk into his phone to appear more popular. Poor boy. He just wants to be loved. Available Spring for $80.